Need a title

Many things to talk about today. Let's start with a review of last week's writing group. Last Thursday was the first day the writing group had gotten to look at my writing. They had a lot of comments. I agree with most of them, and about half of them were actually covered by the previous blog entry.

First thing, they didn't like the characterization of the narrator. Apparently she comes off as younger than I intended, and more masculine than I intended. Same with James. So I either need to grow them up, or let them be younger. I'm not sure which I'd prefer. THey also agreed with my assessment that the diary wasn't working. It introduced more problems than it solved, and while I like the idea, it's not well executed. It'd take some serious work to get things up to shape that way, and it might be safer to just remove it all together.

While they loved the worldbuilding, they thought there wasn't enough exposition about it. I was so worried about avoiding an info-dump (esp. because of the diary medium), that I didn't actually accurately describe the setting. Going into deeper detail of the crazy artifice would have been awesome. They agreed that there wasn't enough emotion (/ reaction), which I knew. Some of the reactions were also out of character (wondering something the character would know). And the stakes weren't well defined, or didn't generate the correct worry/fear, because of the lack of depth in the explanation of the guilds. THe book came off as too much of a McGuffin, probably because it was introduced accidently. On a more amusing note, they expected a note in the bakery scene (which was present, but cut out in edits).

So it sounds like I have 3 main things to think about for the next step: Think a bit harder on my characterization (make sure they seem the age they're supposed to, etc.), provide more description / grounding into the setting, and show more reactions / emotions. Beyond that, some elements of craft (consistent capitalization, formatting, etc.) need to be read through a little more carefully before I throw it up online.

So, with that in hand, I want to talk a little bit about my ideas for my DragonMage rewrite. Now only a handful of people have read the original draft, and frankly it has a lot of problems (I almost wish I had submitted a few chapters of that just so the group saw how far I came before what they saw / tore apart ;)). I've been tossing around genre considerations for a few weeks on it. As written (or at least, as it was in my head), the novel is the first in a trilogy, with each book in the trilogy in different genres. It's not going to work that way. I was listening to an interview, with Patrick Rothfus, at San Diego Comic Con. He talked about his definition of urban fantasy, and fairy tales. This got the gears rolling in my head. The basic premise of his definition is that there are two worlds, the mundane normal world, and the magical other (faerie) world. And basically, the plot happens during the interaction between the two worlds. So, by keeping Magic in the shadows, I could in effect leverage Faerie/UF themes and tropes to keep consistency through the three novels, as they jump from setting to setting. I'm still thinking through all the ramifications, but it is a promising idea.

The other idea I've been kicking around lately is a different way of fleshing out characters. My characters are pretty 1D, and they need more. Secondary characters suffer more than primary, naturally, but even my primary characters have some problem with this. I've heard a couple people mention t his method before, but I never read too much into details, and I've never investigated it myself. So, for this blog entry, I will attempt it. THe basic idea is to do a tarot spread for the character, to discover who they are, what blocks them, and what's in their future. From there, I hope I can plan an arc for the character that is interesting, and I can more consistently characterize them.

So, for this exercise, I will pick the narrator of the sequel for DragonMage, Jeshi the Bloodmage. I've talked about her a little before on this blog (which is why I'm starting with her, truth be told), but this may completely reinvent her.

The spread I'm using is called the Mandala Spread. The deck I'm using is the Shapeshifter Tarot, which includes all the minor arcana and major arcana (though renamed to fit the decks themes), as well as three extra major arcana.
So let's get started!

1. An overview of self - Seeker of the Earth: Initiation, inner and outer strength
2. Ambitions / Goals - The Sacred Flame: Emotion, Energy
3. Ideals, Dreams - The Warrior of the Earth: Self-responsibility, Shapeshifting
4. Real achievements to this time - Deception: Spying, Loss through deception, wrong choices
5. Dependencies, Faulty beliefs - Wealth: Abundance, Gain, Family, Strength
6. Strenghts and positive traits - Abundance: Healing, Success, Prosperity
7. Faults and Weaknesses - Transformation, Release, Renewal
8. Self Perception - Happiness: Contentment, Success, Love
9. Desires - The Lovers: Attraction, Enticement

Well, I'm not sure how I'm going to put all that together. A lot of the data seems to fit more with Sabine, rather than Jeshi how I originally imagined her. (Though the tie to energy is how blood magic works). Look for my next entry on the magic system, and an attempt on how to tie it together.


Before we close, an accounting of the two books I've finished since my last entry.
Witch and Wizard
  The first book in the series by James Patterson, Witch and Wizard tells the story of two young kids who get arrested under charge of witchcraft, and it changes their whole world. The mythological worldbuilding is decent, but the political  landscape pulled me out of the UF genre, where I thought I was. I had a hard time believing in the New Order, at least as it sit in modern time, though the rest of the setting was placed as such.

The Problem Child
Third book in the series by Michel Buckley, we see an arc I've always loved in fiction: Magic addiction. Probably because I'd be prone to it myself, I always sympathize with characters who get touched by magic and find themselves overwhelmed, and reaching for it as a first solution to every problem. The stakes are higher now, and the villain has been revealed to be a pawn. All in all, a good step forward. They're keeping the tension high, even though they've made progress on what I thought was the overarching plot.

The End of NaNoWriMo

I had grand plans to update daily about the NaNoWriMo process. But after the first couple days, I was  pretty overwhelmed. It was a long process. I stayed mostly on track for the first two weeks. I lost a bit the first weekend, but managed to catch up. The second weekend, things took a turn for the worse. I was out of town and didn't get to write the whole weekend. Once I got back, I was overwhelmed by how far I had to go to catch up. I wrote a little over the subsequent week, but had a really hard time keeping motivated. I got week two'ed in week three. Go figure.

That weekend however, I mostly managed to turn things around. By the start of Thanksgiving week, I was mostly caught up. Unfortunately, it was thanksgiving and I got behind again. Due to my new netbook (see http://magiuspendragon.tumblr.com for details about what I intend to do with it), I didn't get any writing done the following weekend. By the time Monday came around, I was almost 8000 words behind, and had only 2 days left. Due to the generous motivation provided by one Arumi, I managed to plow through the last two days. I achieved a win at 6:30pm on Tuesday, Nov. 30th, with what is easily my best piece of writing to date.

So the big question is what now? Truth is, the story isn't done. It needs at least 10000 more words. I promised said Arumi that I would finish before the new years, so that's the first goal. After that, I've joined up with some women in a critique group, so I'll be diong writing for that. Mostly, I plan on revisiting / rewriting my first novel, Dragonmage. There's plenty wrong with it, and I've learned a lot since then. If the process of writing my NaNo novel has taught me anything, it's that I still have some things to learn, but I am learning. I'm improving. It's making a difference.

The next project is one I've been keeping kinda under wraps. But looks like I accidentally committed to it at the TGIO party last night. A friend of mine has inspired a story. But rather than tell it in the written form, I'm going to write, direct, produce, and compose for a short animation. I'm aiming for less than half an hour, though how close to that will depend on how big the story is. I don't have much other than it's titled The Kat Files (okay, maybe too similar to the Dresden Files, or the X Files, or any of the otehrs :p), and is about a detective (PI or Cop, up for grabs) who's also a fallen angel.

The last thing I'll be working on is the tablet project alluded to above. Read the other link for more information.

The last thing I'd like to do before wrapping up this post, is to discuss something about how this years process for NaNo was different than my last two years. Anyone who's known for my NaNo past, knows that I have been rather unlucky. My original goal for the month was 25000 words, rather than 50. This year, I plotted more than I ever had before. It helped a lot. I was us8ing my combined system, between the 7-point plot, and the 8-act structure, with Jim Butcher's Scenes and Sequels. As I progressed through the story, the 7-point plot became the most helpful, with Scenes (but not sequels) second. Sequels are where I have a lot of work to improve. I still like the idea, but as I was writing, I realized that these were more cues than plans. It was still much better than anything else I've done.

NaNoWriMo: Day 3

Yesterday's write-in was basically a success. I didn't get as much written as ... well just about anyone else. But that's okay. We had about 6 or 7 other people show up, 6 that I can remember anyway, but I felt like ther ewas more. There was mostly writing, we didn't even get to introductions until half the people had left. But there was some good discussion about kidnapping, Write-Or-Die, and when to kill your MC. At least those are the three I remmeber off hte top of my head. We went out to dinner afterwards, which was kinda dissappointing but it was food.

I'm about a day behind. I was 2k behind when I went to the write in, and 1.2k behind when I left it. I'm about 100 words behind yesetrday's goal now, so I'll be able to catch that up, but I don't know that I'll get the full 1667 on top of that I needed before heading off to bed tonight. We'll see how it goes though.

NaNoWriMo: Day 2

Yesterday was pretty fail as a writing day. I tried to write some in the morning, but I just wasn't feeling the chapter. I managed to make about 1000 words, so I have to play catchup today, but we're having a write-in at my university library. I'm hoping this will help me catch up, but we'll see tomorrow! As frustrating as yesterday was, I didn't feel the great need to quit already. In fact, if anything my goals have escalated. I had originally set a 25000 word goal for the month. However, since Monday was actually on track, I've decided that if I can end on track on Sunday, I will go ahead and aim for the full 50000. We'll see how it goes!

NaNoWriMo: Day 1

I've been absent from this blog for a while, but with the beginning of NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.org) yesterday, I've decided to blog about the process. I've made good progress on plotting, I'm onto the last 3 sequences. I'm hoping by the time I get to there, it'll be either not November, or I'll have figured out how to get to the ending, and what the last few plot pinches are.

So yesterday was the first day. I probably broke some kind of record by almost giving up at 10am, with < 500 words written. Things were slightly better over lunch, when I took an hour or so to hit 830-some. This was my official goal for the day, since I was intending on only hitting 25k for the month, instead of the full 50.  Things were looking grim though, as I wasn't happy with the content of the writing at all. There was something missing.

After I was done with work (around 5pm), I went home for dinner, and started to revisit the writing. Rather than try and plow forward, I decided to go back to the beginning and add in whatever I felt was missing, reword / reorder some sentences, etc. I didn't completely axe any sentence, which probably fluffs my wordcount a bit since it's commented (doesn't appear in the final document), but it's in the NaNo spirit. I'm happier with it, even if looking at my writing buddies list makes me depressed. I tried to get more done this morning, but that seems to have not worked too well. Maybe I'll manage a good chunk of writing over lunch, since I won't have time this evening unless I don't want to sleep tonight.

NaNo Plotting

So I was going to have some more modeling stuff today, but there was some issue with my rigging and I didn't have the energy to keep working on it. So instead, I'll bring you all up to speed on the novel idea I'm working on for November. At the moment, it looks like while I may not be officially attempting to hit the 50k goal in November for NaNoWriMo, I'll probably be starting this novel then. 
The novel is still in the very early plotting stages, but I have some snitppets of information that I can hand out.


So here, we shall start with the Story Question:
When her father disappeares, 15 year old apprentice artificer Ariadne sets out to find him. But will she succeed when her new mentor seeks to use her for his own ends, a secret shadow-council seeks to destabilize everything she holds dear, and everyone starts blaming her for a rampaging automaton terrorizing the streets?


For those of you who haven't heard, I'm using this story to explore a little of the Steampunk stuff I've been looking at, and I'm also leaning towards a YA novel this time around. Whether it'll stay there remains to be seen. So I'm setting this in a mostly-victorean era, like most Steampunk, but with my own little twists. The steam machines are quite a bit more pervasive (hence steampunk), and are created through a craft I'm calling Artifice. I didn't want artifice to be purely mundane science, so I've included a little bit of elemental power, with inspiration drawn from the Herbie Brennan books I reviewed earlier. Each machine is powered by Trapping an element in a labrynth mechanism. As in my previous novel(s), there are 6 elements (subject to change): Fire, Water, Light, Earth, Air, Shadow. 


After discussing the ideas with a friend for a few days, I've settled into the understanding that each of the elements will be used primarily by different groups within society. Many artificers will dabble in a 2nd, to try and bring aspects of another guild's work into their own (I use the word Guild here loosely, but that's some of the inspiration for the groups). 


Fire - Fire is the element of the military. This covers both the standing military, as well as police, city guards, etc. They primarily focus on weapons and armaments.
Water - Water is the elemnt of the Artisans. They make little tools and devices to make both life, and their own work, easier and more enjoyable. I'm thinking that I'll aslo stick entertainers into this group, but I'm not sure.
Light - Light is the elemnt of the Brotherhood, the ruling religious organization. I'm seeing them mostly as a monastic order at the moment, though they're not without their share of combatants.
Earth - This element is used by the builders, people who make the buildings (or large scale demolitions) and other large construction projects that people need for society. The line between them and Artisans are pretty thin, but I see them more as making large scale projects, rather than tools.
Air - This is the element of transportation. So we'll get to explore airships a little, though even cars / motorcycles / whatever, or maybe even air-powered gondolas to run the Canals of Venice. 
Shadow - This is the element of teh Guild (this is why I said I'm using guild loosely). In this context, the guild is pretty much the Thieves and Assassins of the country. they have enough power to keep the Brotherhood from completely snuffing them out, and shadow is used as a secondary element to bring in aspects of counterintelligence even by legitimate organizations.


Beyond that, things are getting a bit fuzzy. One of the major sideplots to the novel is going to involve her Licensing Exam. The Brotherhood requires that all trained Artificers be licensed (which obviously has some undercurrent of control implied), and will punish practitioners of unlicensed artifice. Ariadne is shaping up to be the kind of person who reaches a bit too far, and tends to get in over her head. For her project, she's going to try and make an Automaton. All her research will suggest that she needs to either master Light, Fire, and Water, or Shadow, Earth and Air (two trinities, still working on a cool name :p), though there's no good explanation for why that'd be better than any two alone. 


That's most of what I have so far. Structure-wise, I'm exploring a new concept: the 3-act, 8-sequence structure as proposed by Alexandra Sokoloff. However, rather than planning for the 15-minute sequence (this is derived from filmmaking), I'm going to try and have about 2-3 chapters, each with at least 1-2 scene/sequel pairs. This is fitting with with the 3-5 scenes she suggests should be present in a sequence for film. However, rather than having my leaves be just scenes, I'm replacing them with Jim Butcher's Scene-Sequel pairs. 


Now I just have to go about filling in the middles.